Top Science News

September 22, 2026

Top Headlines

Coffee Doesn’t Have to Keep You Awake to Disrupt Your Sleep

Sep. 22, 2026 Caffeine may make sleep less restorative even when you fall asleep normally and stay in bed for eight hours, with EEG recordings revealing fewer of the slow brain waves associated with deep sleep. Individual sensitivity varies dramatically, meaning ...

This Emerging Treatment Could Help People Avoid Knee Replacement Surgery

Sep. 22, 2026 A minimally invasive procedure called genicular artery embolization could offer a new middle ground between conservative treatments and knee replacement for osteoarthritis. By blocking tiny blood vessels associated with inflammation, GAE can ...

For the First Time, Scientists Watch Sound Jump Between Quantum States

Sep. 22, 2026 Stanford researchers have recorded the first real-time quantum jumps of sound, watching single phonons abruptly vanish from one energy state to another. The breakthrough could open new paths for quantum computing, error correction, highly sensitive ...

Humpback Whale Mother May Have Mourned Her Dead Calf for Days

Sep. 22, 2026 Researchers observed a humpback whale mother staying beside her presumed stillborn calf for hours and possibly days off Australia’s Gold Coast. She maintained eye contact and remained close to the calf in behavior resembling caregiving and ...

MIT’s Tiny Flying Robot Gets 450% Faster with AI

Sep. 22, 2026 A new AI control system lets MIT’s tiny flying robot move with insect-like agility, boosting its speed by about 450 percent and allowing it to pull off 10 somersaults in 11 seconds. The technology could eventually enable miniature robots to search ...

This New Concrete Is Stronger and Pulls CO2 from the Air

Sep. 22, 2026 Researchers have created a concrete mixture that is both stronger and capable of absorbing carbon dioxide. The best formula, combining zeolite with bamboo biochar, boosted compressive strength by 7.48% and tensile strength by 15% compared with ...

A Strange Circle on Satellite Maps Turned Out to Be a 390-million-year-old Impact Crater

Sep. 22, 2026 An amateur astronomer searching satellite maps for a Quebec camping spot accidentally discovered a massive ancient impact crater. Scientists later found shatter cones that confirmed the ...

The End of Humanity? What Would Happen If the Yellowstone Supervolcano Erupted Now

Sep. 22, 2026 A Yellowstone super-eruption would begin not with a sudden surprise, but with weeks of increasingly alarming warning signs such as migrating earthquake swarms, rapid ground uplift, changing geysers, ...

Brain Scans Reveal a Possible Cause of Long COVID Fatigue and Brain Fog

Sep. 21, 2026 Researchers have found evidence that long COVID may damage dopamine releasing neurons in the brain, potentially explaining persistent fatigue, low motivation, slowed movement, and memory difficulties. The discovery could lead to new treatments that ...

Scientists Discover First New Penguin Species in More Than 100 Years

Sep. 21, 2026 Genetic evidence has revealed a previously unknown gentoo penguin species on the remote Kerguelen Islands and shown that gentoos actually consist of four distinct species. The discovery also highlights a growing threat, as warming oceans could leave ...

Stem Cells Reverse Stroke Damage and Restore Movement in Mice

Sep. 21, 2026 Stem cell transplants helped regenerate stroke-damaged brain tissue in mice, producing new neurons and restoring lost motor function. The treatment also improved blood vessels, inflammation, and the blood-brain barrier, raising hopes that a similar ...

Stopping Ozempic May Raise Heart Attack and Stroke Risk

Sep. 21, 2026 A large study suggests the cardiovascular benefits of GLP-1 drugs such as Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, and Zepbound can disappear surprisingly quickly when treatment stops. After two years off the medications, patients had a 22% higher risk of heart ...

Latest Headlines

updated 9:43am EDT

Black Holes of Every Size Follow the Same Surprising Rule

Sep. 21, 2026 Scientists have found evidence that black holes of vastly different sizes may launch powerful jets according to the same universal rule. Supermassive black holes can produce jets soon after tearing ...

A New Process Turns Plastic Waste Into Gasoline and Diesel Fuel

Sep. 21, 2026 Scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed a surprisingly simple way to turn polyethylene, the common plastic used in shopping bags and cutting boards, into gasoline and diesel-like ...

NASA Just Powered Up Roman’s Massive 300-Megapixel Camera

Sep. 21, 2026 NASA’s Roman Space Telescope has successfully activated its 300-megapixel infrared camera, which will capture enormous stretches of the cosmos with Hubble-like sharpness. Its planet-hunting ...

Scientists Create a Needle-Thin Brain Implant That Can Do Three Jobs at Once

Sep. 21, 2026 A new needle-thin brain implant can record neural activity, deliver drugs, and stimulate multiple brain regions using a single flexible fiber. ...

Chronic Stress May Be Quietly Reshaping Your Heart

Sep. 21, 2026 Chronic inflammation tied to stress, lifestyle, mental health, and socioeconomic conditions may silently change the heart for years before any symptoms appear. People with the highest inflammation ...

Stanford Scientists Discover the Human Brain May Actually Be Two Separate Organs

Sep. 21, 2026 Scientists have found that the human brain develops from two distinct cellular systems, suggesting that evolution fused together two ancient nervous ...

What Kills Schrödinger’s Cat? Gravity May Not Be the Answer

Sep. 21, 2026 Physicists have put a decades-old idea about why the strange rules of quantum mechanics disappear in our everyday world to one of its toughest experimental tests yet. Deep beneath Italy’s Gran ...

Scientists Discover a Hidden “ID Card” in Cat Urine

Sep. 20, 2026 Cats may identify one another through a surprisingly durable chemical “calling card” made from 13 unusual fatty acids in their urine. The compounds appear linked to mysterious fat droplets in the ...

Scientists May Have Solved a 2,000-Year-Old Dead Sea Scrolls Mystery

Sep. 20, 2026 Researchers may have solved a long-running mystery surrounding the Dead Sea Scrolls by proposing that the Qumran sect really did use its distinctive 364-day calendar. Its perfectly ordered 52-week ...

New Nanoparticles Make Hidden Chemical Differences Light Up

Sep. 20, 2026 Scientists have developed ultra-bright nanoparticles that can detect tiny amounts of chemicals and distinguish between molecules that look almost identical. The technology could one day provide a ...

Scientists Find That “perfect” Systems May Be Surprisingly Fragile

Sep. 19, 2026 Complex systems may work better when their parts are not perfectly alike. Northwestern physicists found that carefully balanced variation, or “disorder,” can make networks such as power grids, ...

Billions in Rare Earth Elements May Be Hiding in America’s Coal Ash

Sep. 18, 2026 Scientists are looking to diatoms, sea sponges, and plants for a cleaner way to recover rare earth elements and other valuable minerals hidden inside coal ash, red mud, and mine tailings. The ...

Ancient DNA Reveals How Plague Kept Returning for 400 Years After the Black Death

Sep. 20, 2026 Ancient DNA reveals that plague repeatedly returned to Europe for more than 400 years after the Black Death, evolving into new lineages and spreading through trade, migration, and war. Researchers ...

A 66-Million-Year-Old Tooth Reveals T. Rex Was Nearly as Warm as a Human

Sep. 20, 2026 Chemical clues preserved inside fossilized T. rex teeth reveal that the dinosaur maintained a body temperature of about 97 degrees Fahrenheit, almost identical to humans. The finding provides direct ...

NASA’s Moon Orbiter Finds a 728-Foot Crater That Wasn’t There Before

Sep. 18, 2026 NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has revealed a 728-foot-wide crater that formed on the Moon in 2024, making it the largest newly formed crater ever identified in the solar system. The impact ...

Astronomers Just Found the Youngest Known Planet Ever

Sep. 17, 2026 Astronomers have confirmed a Jupiter-size planet less than a million years old, making Elias 2-24 b the youngest known planet and giving scientists a rare look at a world still being born. Its ...

JWST’s Mysterious Little Red Dots May Be Black Holes Growing at Incredible Speeds

Sep. 17, 2026 New supercomputer simulations suggest JWST’s puzzling Little Red Dots are rapidly growing black holes from the early Universe. Extreme radiation may have helped create unusually massive black hole ...

Einstein’s “spooky Action” Just Survived One of Physics’ Most Extreme Tests

Sep. 20, 2026 Physicists have detected strong evidence that heavy, fleeting Z bosons can become quantum entangled during Higgs boson decays at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. The result shows that Einstein’s ...

This Deep-Sea Enzyme Survives Heat That Destroys Most Proteins

Sep. 19, 2026 A deep-sea microbe uses an exceptionally heat-resistant enzyme to turn atmospheric nitrogen into ammonia at temperatures that would destroy most proteins. Its unusual structure and a newly observed ...

Scientists Are About to Test Einstein’s Gravity With Exotic Matter

Sep. 18, 2026 Scientists have found a new way to create a controlled beam of muonium, an exotic atom containing a heavier cousin of the electron. The advance could allow researchers to test for the first time ...

A 240-Million-Year-Old Fossil Just Changed the Dinosaur Timeline

Sep. 16, 2026 A newly identified 240-million-year-old animal from Tanzania is forcing scientists to rethink the early dinosaur timeline. Dinodontosaurus isiyavamanda belongs to a group previously known only from ...

Scientists Discover the First Diplodocus Ever Found Outside North America

Sep. 18, 2026 A 150-million-year-old dinosaur fossil from Spain has been identified as the first confirmed Diplodocus ever found outside North America. The giant sauropod measured about 25 meters long and was ...

NASA’s Roman Space Telescope Could Last More Than Twice as Long as Planned

Sep. 18, 2026 NASA’s Roman Space Telescope may now have enough fuel for at least 22 years of science, more than double its original 10 year design life. An extremely precise course correction, extra fuel at ...

Venus May Have Swallowed Its Own Moon

Sep. 16, 2026 Venus may have once had a moon, but new research suggests the planet’s incredibly slow rotation could have doomed it. Computer simulations showed that instead of gradually drifting away like ...

66-Million-Year-Old Feather in Dinosaur Poop May Reveal Why Birds Survived the Asteroid

Sep. 11, 2026 A feather discovered inside 66-million-year-old fossilized dinosaur poop may help explain why modern birds survived the asteroid catastrophe. The extinct bird it came from had more primitive ...

Anak Krakatau Blasts Ash Nearly 10 Miles High

Sep. 17, 2026 Anak Krakatau erupted for more than 24 hours in early September, sending volcanic ash up to 50,000 feet into the atmosphere. The ash cloud shut down eight airports, disrupted nearly 3,000 flights, ...

James Webb Reveals Chariklo’s Mysterious Rings Are Changing Faster Than Expected

Sep. 15, 2026 The James Webb Space Telescope has revealed surprising changes in the rings around Chariklo, a small object orbiting between Saturn and Uranus. Over just a few years, its inner ring became more ...

Scientists Finally See DNA “zip” Itself Together for the First Time

Sep. 9, 2026 Scientists have directly observed how two negatively charged DNA molecules can pair up despite normally repelling each other. Positively charged metal ions appear to bridge the gap, helping matching ...

Scientists Create Brilliant White Material Without a Drop of White Pigment

Sep. 10, 2026 Researchers have created a foam-based material that produces intense whiteness and water repellency without titanium dioxide pigments or PFAS chemicals. Inspired by natural structures in snow, ...

Ancient Teeth Reveal Humans Were Getting High 25,000 Years Ago

Sep. 10, 2026 Ancient human remains from Sulawesi suggest people were habitually using the psychoactive betel nut as far back as 25,000 years ago. Researchers found both unusual tooth wear and traces of arecoline, ...